Michael Szul

Builder of minds. Writes code that writes code.

I have spent two decades in software engineering in industries as diverse as insurance, energy, travel, and higher education, including consulting with companies such as AIG and Conde Naste. I have worked in both application and product development, as well as framework creation, code generation, API building, and machine learning. Currently, I am the principal software engineer for the University of Virginia's School of Medicine.

I am the co-host of the Codepunk podcast with Bill Ahern--a podcast about programming, technology, and the digital lifestyle, which has encompassed such topics as data visualization, artificial intelligence, JavaScript/TypeScript, and .NET programming. In addition, I record programming tutorials on YouTube with the first series about building chatbots with Microsoft's Bot Framework and natural language processing tools. I also edit an email newsletter called Bots + Beer.

In October of 2017, I became a Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies.

I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in clinical psychology with an applied research specialization.

Career Highlights

University of Virginia, School of Medicine

Engineered a code generation system and open source front-end framework to create uniformity, stability, and high maintainability across business lines, applications, and employee proficiencies, ensuring uptime, while reducing bugs, context switching, and technical debt.

Architected and led the design and implementation of a next generation medical education learning platform, reducing user experience issues, while increasing process improvement for students, faculty, and staff.

Barbella Digital, Inc.

Established the standards, policies, and practices related to information architecture for higher education, reducing the friction for clients who integrate with multiple services, diverse team, and disparate platforms.

Created an integrated messaging system for low to critical status alerts across multiple domains and departments, deliverying a high volume of important data to multiple platforms.

Performance Media

Helped transform and guide the travel media company into the digital media arena, reducing their investment in external consulting and service providers by increasing their return on software and hardware infrastructure.

Pioneered their social and mobile initiatives in the early stages of the company's smartphone and social media growth.